Crossing the Dome

That illusory, ethereal voice vanished in an instant, as if it had never existed.

Alice blinked in the dark "tunnel," puzzled by what she had just heard. She suspected she had misheard it, but...

The captain had said that in a place this strange, she had to immediately report anything she heard or saw, even if it really was a hallucination.

So she immediately grabbed Duncan's arm hard. "Captain, I heard something just now!"

"A sound?" Duncan turned around at once and stared into the doll's eyes in the darkness. "What sound?"

Alice immediately told the captain what she had heard—including that brief, unrecognizable noise, and the strange "name" LH-03, Navigator Three.

In the dark, endless tunnel, Duncan slowly widened his eyes. He looked at the doll before him with an especially strange and startled expression, and then a trace of realization suddenly appeared in his eyes.

So that was it... So that was how it was?!

A torrent of chaotic thoughts and startling conjectures surged into his mind, and he understood many things in an instant—while almost at the same time, he noticed dense, magnificent lights appearing at the edge of his vision.

Duncan abruptly turned in astonishment toward the direction where those lights had appeared.

The next second, he saw the "Starry Sky" above the dome of the Abyssal Deep Sea—

Magnificent starlight appeared at the end of the "tunnel." It was a grand vista formed by countless stars, stellar nebulae, and clouds of high-energy radiation intertwined together. A river of stars stretched across the boundless darkness, while violently erupting colossal celestial bodies had been torn apart into glowing mists spreading between galaxies. The entire sight was like an endlessly splendid and brilliant curtain, crashing into Duncan and Alice's vision with overwhelming force!

Duncan's eyes widened instantly.

This